The wolf: between fantasy and reality
How my perception of the big predator changed over time
When I was a child, in the summer, me and my family were used to go to visit our relatives in Abruzzo, in a small town called “Pescocanale”. I was growing up in the city, and for me going there for vacation was a little bit scary, our little house was indeed surrounded by wild nature, and in the evening it was very dark outside, meaning almost no artificial lights and many animals I was not used to, among all of them: bats, snakes, and wolves.
These animals scared me for many reasons, mostly related to popular beliefs. For instance, I was sure the bats would eventually get stuck on my hair, and that the snakes would bite me if I would not make noise by biting a stick to the street during the “hiking” we did with parents and friends.
But among all the animals, the one that I was more scared of was the wolf, and while it happened to see many bats and snakes, I never saw a wolf, so my fear was somehow a fantasy I built up because of other people stories and beliefs about this animal: my fear was cultural and did not have anything to do with reality.
Recently, probably because deeper inside I didn’t really believe in all these stories, I got really passionate about ethology, and I start reading books about animal behaviour. I always wanted to know more about the wolves, but even going to buy a book about it was still a bit scary. What I would eventually find out? And what if was really a dangerous and evil animal, like I’ve been told? What if all my beliefs were confirmed?
I took courage and I went buy a book of Marco Albino Ferrari, called “La via del Lupo”. I never felt more stupid, when finishing it. I was very sad not only because all my beliefs about the wolves were wrong, but mostly because I painted them in my head like mountain monsters and I felt I somehow damaged them.
As Ferrari writes in his book, wolves are really scared of us, we almost brought them to extinction and they came back on their own only after a new law that enforced their protection, along with the depopulation of the mountains and the introduction of animals for hunting purposes, so they have written in their DNA that we are dangerous animals. Therefore, it’s really rare to see one, almost impossible, they can smell our scent from kilometers.
I was a child, it’s easy to condition a child, but, I asked my self, what about adults? I was scared of them, but now I am not because I decided to investigate about the topic. Are adults still scared of them? What’s their opinion? I wanted to know.
There is a small town in Liguria, west of Italy, in the province of La Spezia that I have been to several times (I won't write its name here because I respect the privacy of the residents that live here). It's primarily a summer paradise for rich people who bought a house so they could spend their holidays there (you can't find houses for under 1.000.000 euros). Although there are a lot of tourists, there are still only a few locals living there, mostly retired farmers. I asked them few questions about wolves, sometimes directly, sometimes they drove the conversation towards the topic.
To the question “Have you ever seen a wolf?”, an old man answered me “No, but I know that some people saw one, he (or she?) was following a wild boar, and both of them were followed by a dog.” In these scenarios, it’s always the same: someone that saw something, and then the story spreads among the people like a fairytale (or an horror story). He was also trying to convince me that wolves are dangerous for humans.
At that point, there was no need to ask anymore questions as the conversation escalated quickly, to the point that he told me “If I see one (the wolf), I will shoot him!” Reminding him that killing a wolf in Italy is illegal, was not working to change is mind.
He is not the only one believing the wolf is a terrible animal, another local told me that I should be very scared as is known they were eating kids-shepherd. This can sound very scary, right? It’s important to underline that this happened many years ago, and for hundreds of year we do not have any records of aggression from the wolves. Sometimes people confuse wolves with dogs that look like wolves, blaming the first ones to be the responsible of the aggressions toward humans.
For me this fantasies are really mind blowing: mostly every (bad) belief about the wolf, it’s a lie!
How did we get to this point? Ferrari gives a religious explanation, coming from Christianity: there is Jesus and his sheeps (us), and on the other side there is the bad wolf, killing the poor sheeps. This explains everything.
So far seems that these beliefs belong only to people that live in the middle of nowhere, but I want to challenge you: ask to someone that live in a big city, like London or New York, if they think the wolf is dangerous for humans. The answer will surprise you.
From remote villages to the fancy metropolis, we all share the fear for the wolf.